Working together

This page will hopefully serve students and trainees who want to work with me on research. However, there is plenty for undergraduates, masters, practitioners, and industry folks to understand about my work here too.

Are we a good research fit?

If you are a prospective Ph.D. student, please email me and mention that you’ve read this section (see my amazing collaborator Stevie Chancellor’s guide for how to do this effectively). I look for excellent students who are passionate about developing new ways to: diagnose, respond to, and evaluate digital-safety for at-risk groups in computing. I look for students looking to forge new pathways at the intersection of: Human-Computer Interaction, and, Security & Privacy. Skills in quantitative measurement (e.g., scraping, crawlers) and qualitative methods or analyses (e.g., interviews, grounded theory) are a must.

I also look for values that align with my own: making a meaningful difference in mitigating the harms caused by technical design and deployment. I use an interventionist research approach, meaning that my methods are human-centric and action-orientated. Sometimes, this means partnering with community organizations (e.g., ENDGBV, Barnardo’s) or private industry (e.g., Google, Apple, J.P.Morgan Chase) to deploy systems/services. In some areas, I also use my research to advocate for real-world change, including intervention design, tweaks to consumer-facing technologies, and informing policymakers bridge the research-to-practice.

Prospective Ph.D students

If making technologies safer for all excites you, please apply to New York University’s PhD Computer Science program. This is a combined program across the Courant and Tandon Schools. In your application, it’s very important you mention my name as someone you’d like to work with (even if we’ve never spoken) in both the submission form and your statement of purpose/essay. This way your application can find its way to me. Emailing me during this time is not a great way to ensure I see your application – I get swamped with emails at the best of times. I receive ~6-8 reach outs a week, with ~20 at peak season so if you don’t receive a response, please don’t take it personally; it’s me, not you.

The CS faculty and I will assess your application in the general applicant pool, and consider the strength of your recommendation letters, statement of purpose, grades, and how well you align with both my research interests and those of the PhD program.

Should your application be competitive, I might reach out to you for a further conversation during the submissions cycle. Please note that faculty members cannot individually decide on acceptance for either the MS or PhD program.

Good luck!

What about opportunities for undergrads or masters?

I reserve a small number of slots for advising and guiding undergraduates and masters students on their thesis/dissertation each year. This is entirely dependent on how many mentees I currently have in my lab, if my mentees are looking for another skillset to complement their own, and work capacity. Topic match isn’t always a guarantee for us to work together. Human-Computer Interaction and Security & Privacy are both large fields so please only get in touch if digital safety is something you are really interested in working on.

I give a preference for students who show an interest in research, and to those who are returning students to work with me. This is so that we can have more time to foster a long term working relationship.

What about other work opportunities?

Sometimes I look for Teaching Assistants (Tandon calls these ‘Course Assistants’) that will help with the delivery of my courses (Trust & Safety, Clinical Computer Security). I have a preference for recruiting students who have either: a) already taken the course in the past or b) have evidence of good performance in related courses.

I prioritize taking interns over the summer due to the time commitment (3+ months) which allows for a greater engagement in a project area and better assimilation into my group. If this sounds of interest to you, please try and get in touch early (e.g., Dec – Mar proceeding summer) so that paperwork can be processed on time.